


World's Turning Pages

by Elleth



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen, Prologue, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-11-30 22:57:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11473398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: The world has ended, but the survivors keep living. A series of drabbles for the prologue characters.





	1. Norway

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yuuago](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuuago/gifts).



> All drabbles are 100 words as per GDocs wordcount. The title is from Tame Impala's _Apocalypse Dreams_.

"Sigrun's not back yet?" asks Ingrid, over coffee, meaning Berit's World War II dandelion roots and half a crushed caffeine pill for effect.

Aksel shakes his head, glum. It's dark up by the fence that was the road; dots of patrol guards' lights shine all the way into the café by the dock, absent natural light this spring. It's raining again.

"Think something got her?"

"Can't. Gods, let her be okay."

"God _s_?"

"Any that'll listen." He plays with the ring he's been meaning to give her, always chickening out. "Gods…"

A light starts down the homeward path.


	2. Denmark

Signe's hands are bloody, but she grins at Michael, gone pale green. The new calf squirms; the mother cow struggles to her feet with swaying udder, milk-heavy.

"A little girl." Brushing gore off her hands with straw, Signe rises to peck Michael on the cheek. She feels about as heavy as the cow, dreads her husband's reaction when it's _her_ turn. "What should we call her?"

Asking Michael - a capital-M Mistake before the name's even spoken. She doesn't miss the glance at her belly either. 

"Well… cats _are_ lucky," she relents. Bloody hormones. " _Maybe_."


	3. Finland

Ensi's a sharp, quiet child, like the skies over Saimaa her first autumn. Her toys are swan figurines, her lullabies are Aino and Saku singing the Kalevala until they know the book by heart and Tuuli makes good on her promise to scream. 

"You can't hear them," Saku objects, squinting tiredly. "We can. She'll need this." 

Ensi simply scowls. If she babbles, it's already the rhythm of a runo. 

"She's going to grow up a crazy person," Tuuli says. 

Aino remembers begging to be spared craziness. "At least then she'll be set for this," she says resolutely, gesturing all around.


	4. Sweden

They packed batteries enough to last Mia three careful months before her PlayGuy's screen goes black for good. It's a charm after that, a memory.

There'll be batteries again someday, her father says. 

She cries herself to sleep, trading it away for ammunition the next winter - her last tie to the Old World gone, the full moon glaring down the trader's snowshoe track. To calm, her grandfather tells of the moon landing - years and years ago, another life like magic. 

Growing up, she finds there's no such thing as magic, or batteries. 

She trades, ties her snowshoes, and goes on.


	5. Iceland

Sun glitter on the sea, and a vessel, fingernail-sized. A minuscule Norwegian dragon-head moves grinning toward Reykjavík. These are the things Árni sees from the high pasture. 

Suddenly, the water is calling with enough weight to sink him like a stone, with the dreams, the radar images and the gunfire still bright behind his eyelids. 

His wife's bell-peal voice cuts into the past. "Why are you - " Guðrún, leaning on her shepherd's crook, begins to ask. 

"- staring _out there_?" finishes the younger Árni, with distaste curling up his nose. 

Árni only smiles at them, his comfort and his hope.


End file.
